Climate Change
Our Climate Change Strategy (link opens in a new window) commits us to monitoring, measuring and reducing our carbon dioxide emissions. Short-term and long-term reduction targets have been set. We generate carbon dioxide emissions from the operation of our trains, heating and lighting buildings, and business travel. Over 90% of our emissions are generated by our trains.
These emissions are directly related to fuel consumption which is influenced by a range of factors such as type of vehicles, engine size, speed, vehicle mileage and number of engines.
The UK Rail division carbon dioxide emissions increased slightly this year. This is due in part to new franchise changes that alter the composition of the vehicle fleet. In addition, a number of new vehicles with larger engine size and weight (and which therefore use more fuel) have been introduced.
However, these new engines have allowed us to achieve significant improvements in reliability and customer comfort and thus have encouraged more passengers to use our services. Continued passenger growth across the rail franchises has helped to cut emissions per passenger kilometre by over 6%.
We calculate our carbon dioxide emissions in line with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol published by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and World Resources Institute and Global Reporting Initiative.
To take account of new franchises we calculate changes in emissions against a rolling annual average.